Forum:Remove game logos from infoboxes
Using game "logos" in the name parameter of the infobox has created a number of problems, mainly to do with the aesthetics. Some, such as Bad Ice-Cream 3, place a letter or number below the rest of the name. On the titlescreen, this looks great, but in the infobox, it creates a huge blank space on the bottom that is visually unappealing because the "3" slightly sticks out. Others have issues with colour such as In drmzzz, whose light coloured text blends in with the infobox background. It's also ridiculous to do logos for Jam games that don't really have any to begin with. Don't get me started on Emprise of Stratus. Removing these particular ones and just using text would be the solution, however, it does create an inconsistency based on the "pick and choose" factor that rules which games should keep their logos and which ones won't. Then again, game logos themselves are very inconsistent with their appearance. They are formatted to fit with the game's titlescreen specifically and not the infobox. Compare this to game icons or the Jam thumbnails. Each follow the same dimensions, and in the case of the icons, have a border surrounding them. This makes it easier to put into an infobox because each of these pictures is uniform in dimensions and aesthetics. Even blog post images, which we use for Nitrome Pixel Love Wiki, keep to the same dimensions for the most part. And they're designed to go against a light background anyways, because of the way the Nitrome blog is styled. We cannot go around modifying logos to fit within an infobox, such as Bad Ice-Cream 3's or In drmzzz. What we can do is use plain text, which is always consistent and visible in the infobox. Logos are problematic because they're only designed for the game they are in. When put against the same colour infobox, some display great while others look horrendous. Although perhaps a "boring" style choice, plain text ensures that the game name in each infobox remains noticeable and easy to read. Please consider these things. 07:05, July 2, 2014 (UTC) :Aside from a couple exceptions, for the most part the logos look great and add a lot to the page. In the case of the jam games, since they're all very different from each other and don't all follow the same pattern that Nitrome games do (menu screen with logo, level select with boxes for each level, etc.), I think we shouldn't have logos for those either. They're not Nitrome games, so I don't think we have to use the same guidelines for making their pages. In the case of Bad Ice Cream 3, it would look so much better if you cropped out the logo at the bottom where the paint drip starts. The paint drip itself takes up about 1/3 of the image's height. 13:29, July 2, 2014 (UTC) ::Add a lot to the page? It's just pictures, and very inconsistent ones at that. I found another example where game logos look odd in infoboxes: Swindler 2. The logo is much huger than the icon itself. It doesn't look good, plus it's not obvious from the game logo that the game is known as "Swindler 2". Using text ensures that the game name is clear, and maintains that consistency without having to decide whether a logo is fitting to be in an infobox or not. 08:27, July 18, 2014 (UTC) :::*bump* Again, this choice is simply too inconsistent to be placed in an infobox, especially since we're using a 50x50 game icon as our main image. The better idea is to go with text for the game name in the name parameter, not a large inconsistent game logo that doesn't even work for Jam games. 19:24, October 18, 2014 (UTC) ::::Yeah, I'm fine with removing them. I believe that before Lilonow and some other people did this to prevent spoilers from appearing in the "Read more" section. -- 19:29, October 18, 2014 (UTC) :::::I still don't think they should be removed. For Jam games, the format of most games is different from Nitrome games so I don't believe they should be required to follow the same format. Almost all Nitrome games have title text done in the same style, while Jam games follow various different formats. I don't think it makes sense to force the structure of Nitrome game info boxes on Jam games just because they're on the Nitrome website. When dealing with Nitrome games, I think the few logos that are a pain to deal with can be fixed with proper formatting/cropping the image. For example, in the case of Bad Ice-Cream 3 I would leave out the sign and crop the paint drip at the bottom, which would make it look much better. I don't think the logos that look bad are numerous or intractable enough to mean the removal of all the titles that work perfectly and look aesthetically pleasing. If you make me a list of the bad looking titles I can try to do something about them. ::::: 03:38, October 19, 2014 (UTC) If that was the case, then why do Jam games get the same treatment as the other game pages, with their hard to read logos and itty bitty icons? Personally I think it is much more ideal to go with their thumbnails as presented on the Jam page, not the ones that only allow you to see a fraction of when you're browsing the website. It's not just the aesthetics that are bothersome, but the size. The image should be the stand-out from the infobox, ideally one of the taller components (at least taller than the heading of the infobox). But because we use 50x50 icons, any tall game logos push the image parameter down, rendering it useless to be given image placement in the infobox in the first place. The point is that logos are too inconsistent across all games to be forced to function with the same expectations as regular text in the "name" parameter. And another note: wouldn't modifying the image by moving around certain placements of the logos make the image fanart, since it wasn't presented in the logo in the first place? The less we tamper with the logo, the better. Of course, we do already have an image in the infobox: the game icon, and that should be the focus of the infobox. What we could consider is that we remove all game icons from the infobox, and just use logos for a single name heading. I'm going to point out some aesthetics and size issues from the first few articles: *Hot Air - This one is okay. *Sandman - This is white text with barely any outline going against a light grey infobox. It's difficult to read from a distance, especially in the mobile skin where the logo is pitted against a white background. *Chick Flick - Too tall, overshadows the game icon. *Roly Poly - Again, the logo is too tall. It's also narrow, with lots of grey space hanging on either side of the logo. *Feed Me - It's a little on the large side; the main issue here has more to do with the spelling and punctuation, which might cause users in the future to believe the game should always be referred to as "Feed Me!" (instead of "Feed Me") whereas we are supposedly going with the presentation of names on the "All Games" page of Nitrome.com. *Tanked Up - Too wide, though changing the image width probably fixes this for the most part. *Scribble - It's okay, though again, the exclamation mark may be misleading. *Gift Wrapped - The different colours make a number of different letters hard to read, like the light blues and pinks. *Frost Bite - Similar to Roly Poly, the letters are stacked atop each other, leaving too much grey space on the sides. Oh shoot I kind of did forget that the logos were concealing the end image for some articles...if that was the case, why didn't we use a larger image for the image parameter? We already have icons on the Nitrome 2.0 icons page. We could use the titlescreen instead if it's that big of an issue. Or maybe insert a screenshot of the game to explain its gameplay or something. 08:19, October 24, 2014 (UTC) *hi remember me bump* More logos with issues: *B.C. Bow Contest - Look at it from a farther distance. The background of the text for "Bow Contest" matches the background used for the lettering of "BC". Plus BC is covered by a clutter of decor surrounding it, making it overall hard to read, especially when sized down and squished into the header section. *Skywire VIP - The letters of "skywire" are hardly visible, first because of all the grey lines running behind it that also happen to be of similar colouration, not to mention its miniscule size in comparison to "VIP". *Tiny Castle - This one could be an easier fix. There's just a little too many unnecessary components captured here. Probably the only thing that would look good is the Tiny Castle text in on its own, since it already has a darker outline surrounding the lighter coloured text. I dunno; maybe you could spend time fixing these issues, but I had another thought. If you really want logos in the infobox, why not just replace all icon images with the game's titlescreen instead? That will display the logo as it was meant to be presented in the menu as a whole. Unlike logos, main menus have rectangular shapes, making them easier to resize within an infobox without all the muss and fuss of teeny tiny 50x50 icons. Plus it will be a big enough size and prominent enough to get caught onto "Read more", preventing spoiler images from being seen. If you really want game logos in the infobox, this solution would be more ideal as it will present them with the aesthetic they were meant to be presented with. 08:54, November 18, 2014 (UTC) :I think a lot of these boil down to that more was captured than necessary for the title. I think being more exclusive about the parts of the titlescreen included in the logos would improve their visibility. The logos that are too large that you have pointed out I have made smaller and they look better. I don't think the exclamation marks are that misleading; users are going to pay more attention to the title of what the page is than the text of the logo. Also, I think having grey on the sides is okay as long as it isn't too much; when the title is even slightly too tall, though, it looks terrible. As for the title screen instead of icon idea, I don't think the icons look that bad as it is. Besides, we would have to shrink the title screens down to the point where you wouldn't be able to read them. I'll fix Tiny Castle, Skywire V.I.P and B.C. Bow Contest today. For Tiny Castle I will probably get rid of the castle and just keep the "Tiny Castle" text. For Skywire V.I.P I can leave out the scaffolding which makes it harder to read. For B.C. Bow Contest I will keep the rock, the humans, and the animals aside from the dinosaur. I think all the trees surrounding the logo are what makes it harder to read. Let me know what you think when I finish. 21:54, November 18, 2014 (UTC) ::You're probably aware of these already since I pointed out a number of them in chat (and you checked them yourself), but I'm going to list them on this thread anyways for future reference and so that any other user interested in fixing game logos can take a gander at these. Feel free to strike them as you finish. ::#Sandman - White text works in the game's menu because the background is a darker blue. In the infobox, the background is grey, which makes it really difficult to read. Probably the best solution here is to redo the screenshot with the game's background in tact. ::#Hot Air 2 - I think we can remove the "All blown up" banner from here. It's best to just mention the full title in the lead sentence and have the name parameter reflect the title of the page. ::#Yin Yang - Ehh like Sandman's, white text against our infobox is hard to read, but at least the black "Yin" sort of balances it out? Game backgrounds included here would be ideal. ::#Off The Rails - The text is okay, but the fact that the letters are stacked up makes it difficult to find a good balance. If the letters are big enough to be legible, they're too tall. When shrunken down, they leave too much grey space. ::#Headcase - Just the Headcase letters alone will do here, no Norman or that purple shape behind it. ::#Final Ninja - I dunno; this logo is pretty bloated. We could make do without the emblem and just have text. I don't know what effect that would have on the gradient for "Final" though. ::#Mallet Mania - *sigh* well this applies to most diagonally oriented logos (Bump Battle Royale). The orientation just doesn't look good when put in an infobox. Not sure how we'll fix that. ::#Bomba - Background isn't really necessary, since the pink text has a dark outline. ::#Twin Shot - It would be preferred if the angels were cropped out, but I understand that they do overlap on a part of the letters. Thankfully they're not super tall so it's not a top priority. ::#Ice Breaker: The Red Clan - Basically the same thing as Icebreaker's. Needs the background removed. ::#Cosmic Cannon - Another difference in perspective. :/ ::#Double Edged - We could make do without the sword. ::#Castle Corp - Ehh just the "Castle Corp" text will do here. ::#Cave Chaos - Can barely read "Cave Chaos" when it's dark grey against dark grey. ::#Ice Breaker: The Gathering ::#Chisel - Just text is okay. ::#Bullethead - Same as Chisel. ::#Worm Food - This one feels...cluttered when squashed. Like the words are difficult to read because of their placement, and that slab of stone behind "Food" also proves to be a bit more of a legible challenge. ::#Temple Glider - Yeah we can get rid of the bird background and just have "Temple Glider" text. ::#Sky Serpents - I'm inclined to say that the serpent isn't really needed, though it should be okay with it. Removing it will allow the logo to be bigger without sacrificing too much unbalanced blank space. ::#Enemy 585 - Only "Enemy 585" is necessary here. ::#Bad Ice-Cream - Remove the triangle with the ice cream sign; it takes up way too much space. ::Okay I'm done for now. Have fun. I'll look for more later maybe. I might even help fix a few. 09:09, November 20, 2014 (UTC) :::Welp here I am again, listing some more logos with aesthetic issues. :::#Test Subject Complete - Yes it works for the other Test Subject games, but this one is set against a dark lit background, and the letters of "Test" happen to be transparent. Not sure if you want to include a portion of the background here so that people can actually read the letters of "Test". :::#Isometric logos - among these include Mallet Mania and Bump Battle Royale. Mallet Mania's especially, but they both don't fit into the infobox and make staring at it in that cramped space a pain. Not to mention the inconsistency! :( :::#Cave Chaos - Wouldn't it make more sense to just have the letters of Cave Chaos in the infobox, rather than the grey slab of rock and the miners, making this logo difficult to read at a small size? 08:11, March 12, 2015 (UTC) :::Looks like I made a mistake twice, oops. :D Well it seems like Takeshi uploaded a new version of Cave Chaos' logo but the file uploader did something funky and just resized the original uploader's old image. As for the isometric logos - yeah, they're a pain. As with Sandman's; how are you going to fix that? 08:14, March 12, 2015 (UTC) :::::How about you put the logos with those cases in the Image section of the infobox? -- 16:26, May 29, 2015 (UTC) :::::No wait, that's actually stupid... Interesting thought...I think I saw Nitrome Database Wiki set up their infoboxes in this manner. The way I see it, it would need to be done consistently - either have all logos in the image= parameter or not. I'm fine with having a logo replace the game icons in the image parameter, though I believe in that case, the name text would be removed otherwise it'd be redundant. :P 09:17, June 2, 2015 (UTC) :Revert to large font text. Just having the logo and no icon would look odd, in my opinion. -- 21:36, June 2, 2015 (UTC) ::At this point the logos that are left are pretty much unfixable... If nobody has any other suggestions I would be fine with changing them back to boring text for uniformity's sake. :/ Also personally I think having the icon in the infobox is a lot more consistent and looks a lot nicer than having the logo in its place. 23:47, June 25, 2015 (UTC) :::Meh this is a bit off topic but I would prefer it a lot more if we replaced game icons in the image section with their titlescreen. Even though the sizes are inconsistent, they're at least rectangular and can be proportioned accordingly. This would also be helpful in having that image overtake the Read more section than an ending image, in such cases. Game icons are just too tiny. 09:02, August 31, 2015 (UTC) ::::Hm, an interesting idea. Having the menus in the infobox instead of the icon. I guess I kind of like this idea (as long as we put the icons in some sort of gallery on the page), but it brings up some problems. 1. As you said, the sizes are inconsistent. Mobile menus differ from flash game menus, and some mobile menus differ from each other. 2. Icon games don't have traditional menus. They just have three buttons for play, full screen, and options. Also, maybe this topic should have its own new forum post so users don't have to scroll through all that unrelated stuff up above.. 21:15, August 31, 2015 (UTC) :I removed all the infoboxes a while ago so this topic should be closed anyway, sorry. 21:33, August 31, 2015 (UTC) ::I was just responding for the different topic of "should we replace game icons with menu screenshots?" I'll make it its own topic. 21:45, August 31, 2015 (UTC)